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Communism Essay

Below is an essay on "Communism" from Anti Essays, your source for research papers, essays, and term paper examples.

Communism is a social, political and economical ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production. This movement, in its Marxist-Leninist interpretations, significantly influenced the history of the 20th century, which saw intense rivalry between the "socialist world" and the "western world" ending in the Cold War between the Eastern block and the "Free World". While Karl Marx’s belief in communism and Joseph Mazzini’s beliefs helped create great revolutions and start world movements, Mazzini wanted a unified, democratic Italy, Marx believed his own theory of government.

In Marxist theory, communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals. The exact definition of communism varies, and it is often mistakenly, in general political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however, Marxist theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to communism. Mazzini, believed in a unified and democratic Italy for his people because for so long Italy was many different “states” and all run by foreign powers. He wanted the people to take over and run the country, which is where he is similar to Marx in a sense. In Mazzini’s Essay on the Duties of Man for the Working Man he says, “Your first duties - first as regards importance - are, as I have already told you, towards Humanity. You are men before you are either citizens or fathers. If you do not embrace the whole human family in your affection; if you do not bear witness to your belief in the Unity of that family, consequent upon the Unity of God, and in that fraternity among the peoples which is destined to reduce that Unity to action; if,...